Installation Report for Sarge
Hi,
I installed Sarge RC1 last weekend. I did not choose the desktop task,
but rather apt-got the gnome meta-package along with gdm and
x-window-system-core (I already got KDE rotting around in my main
installation...).
I got roughly the following debconf questions asked during the gnome
package installation (priority high I think)
- pango asked some stuff about defoma
- twice(!) about the papersize
- nautilus thumbnail generation
- cdrecord suid
Is there no sane default for the pango question which would work? Can't
the nautilus/totem packages figure thumbnail generation out with each
other? E.g., if only one is installed, use that one. If both are
installed, there should be one as default, perhaps with a medium debconf
priority question so that the user can choose.
Next some general thinks I noticed:
1. CD burning worked out-of-the-box with the initial user even without
setting cdrecord suid. However, a second user (added with adduser) was
not able to burn CDs, nautilus-cd-burner just always asked for a CD to
be inserted, which was a bit misleading (but probably cdrecord's fault)
2. I believe the default Debian GNOME splash screen and the default
Debian background don't work very well with the default upstream GNOME
artwork (especially the magenta/pink seems to be a bit misplaced).
That's just my esthetic opinion though, of course :)
3. Totem was missing from the default install, but I believe this got
changed in the meantime.
4. Sound worked out-of-the-box with totem and gstreamer/rhythmbox,
however OSS was used rather than ALSA (and ALSA does not seem to work,
e.g. gnome-volume-properties has a tab for ALSA but then says 'no
mixsers found' or so). I'm not sure why that is, perhaps
a hotplug blacklisting issue.
5. Epiphany did not seem to use sensible fonts by default, the font menu
in the preferences only listed some xfont-like selections like
times-normal-iso-foo-20 or so. Also, what about using bitstream vera
fonts by default for the desktop? The font preferences displayed simply
'Sans' by default, not sure whether that's the same.
6. Not being used to running testing, I was confused why Gimp wasn't
there until I found out it hasn't reached testing yet :(
Finally, I'd like to make the following suggestions for the default
install/session:
7. Use a different gtk+ engine. Indu(b)strial is really nice here. (the
default icons and window borders look good enough, IMHO)
8. Add a starter for epiphany and evolution to the top panel and remove
the starter for gnome-terminal (this was also suggested in a recent 3rd
party usability study of GNOME)
9. Add a notification area next to the starters
10. Maybe also add starters for 'Help' and 'Logout' to the top panel
That's it for my experience/suggestions.
Needless to say that GNOME in Debian really rocks now :)
Michael
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